Fungal Halo

I remember Emilia. I could have loved her, but in the end her heart was set on another.

I gave her everything—all my hate and all my power—and we would have had the world if she hadn’t thrown it all away for that foul priestess of hers.

A bolt of light streaks through the air, faster than the human eye can track, aimed unerringly for my servant’s heart. A blur of motion intercepts it, and with a sharp crack of sound, the magically charged arrow is deflected to the side.

Good puppet. Well done.

There’s tremendous power in the words-never-written.

I wake up, and right away I can tell that something is very wrong.

I lurch upright in a panic, scanning a room that should be familiar—that can’t be familiar—but I can barely process what I’m seeing as real.

Somehow I’ve been sent back to the turn of the last century.

The touch of a hand at my waist guides me down the hall. I know the path by heart, but still she keeps me close and uses gentle pressure to lead me in a turn down one corridor or another.

“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this doll, is rightwise witch of this house,” your friend reads aloud.

The blade bearing that inscription has been rammed through the body of a doll lying, limp and tragic, on an otherwise empty altar in front of a dilapidated house.

My fingers intertwine with my sister’s as we approach our destination. We are dressed for the occasion, bright smiles painted on perfectly sculpted faces, wearing dresses of sumptuous crimson cloth with sable lace and gold accents, complementing the beauty of our bodies.

The two of us carry our witch to the house of its rival. Hidden from sight, gliding across our bodies, it roils with expectant energy and restless teeth in the shadows that play across our limbs and trail behind us.

“Astonishing! Where you come from, they really let humans pilot your own mechs? Just, what, with your hands? Operating buttons and levers like a carnival ride?”

They crowd me, far more curious than I ever expected a bunch of human-shaped machines could be.

The water churns with the thrashing bodies of countless swimming parasites. It’s hard to get a good look at them like this. All I can pick out is a handful of individual details—tendrils, rows of tiny teeth, beady eyes. I have to put my arm in there and let one choose me.

The knight was a hero once. The princess called her that, at least, before sending her on this quest.

“We all miss Reisa,” my friend told me. “And we all want to see that bastard pay, believe me, but this is too much.”

The edibles came on stronger than I thought, but it felt nice to just let myself lean on my friend’s shoulder and melt into the couch.

The way it usually goes is this: you take your vitamins, you draw the door on glass, you speak your goodbyes, and then you slip through to the other side.

Then your life is hers to play with for a while, and oh, how her pleasure makes you smile!

A coven must guard itself against the interloper that brings infectious false magic into its midst.

When it adopts a young thing that appears to have the gift, it is a kindness. When it later dumps the same girl into a pit to rot, that is also a mercy.

That the planet was haunted would never deter the executives running the galaxy’s biggest mining corporation, of course. They weren’t the ones who’d have to go near it.

No, they just send their most disposable employees there. Us.

It’s an invitation, don’t you see? I just think you’d like it here.

My fingers dance along the ground, just on the other side from you, the boundary between earth and sky just another surface for me to skate along.

It’s just folklore.

You try to learn it anyway, even if it doesn’t make much sense. After all, you’re traveling to visit the land of your ancestors, trying to connect with some kind of heritage, and what’s the use if you don’t put the effort into it?

The thing about being in a hacker collective is that a lot of us get really competitive, but we still cooperate to elevate the whole group, you know?

It’s in the spirit of both sides of that dichotomy that I’ve decided to try to crack one of those DroneCorp units open.

The temple of Lunera is overtaxed. Its resources—and priestesses—have been stretched to their limits caring for the crowd of villagers who lost homes, livelihoods, friends, and family.

Making things worse, our goddess has gone silent, our prayers left unanswered.

The door’s long, slow creak echoes through the large chamber filled with arcane relics, humming catalysts, and piles of recently consulted tomes.

In the center, a very bored demon perks her ears up and casts a curious glance toward her visitor.